Middle English

I will be pursuing a thesis focused on Grendel’s mother from the Old English poem Beowulf, Guinevere’s mother from the Arthurian romance The Awntyrs off Arthur and the Pearl maiden from the allegorical Middle English poem Pearl. I will be consulting the following editions of the primary texts: The...

The Awntyrs Off Arthur (Awnytrs) is an Arthurian Romance written in Middle English hyper-alliterative verse which is the most demanding and richly echoic style of verse in the English language. Each stanza is comprised of thirteen lines, which each line features four alliterative stresses, and adhere to the rhyming scheme ababababcdddc. From...

The rationale for Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is competition. The pilgrims must compete in a story competition where the winner of the competition gets their dinner bought for them and the remaining participants provide their own. This sense of competition resonates within the tales themselves, where each tale...